WOOT! After researching and taking notes for six months I finally pulled the trigger on a new vacuum sealer. And NOOOOOO, it ain't no foodsaver! As you all probably know I'm a chef by trade and an all-around kitchen geek. Clamp style sealers are very inexpensive and do a good job on many things but don't work so well to seal liquids. And since I do a lot of sous vide cooking I like to be able to cook in a liquid. This requires a chamber vacuum sealer.

Enter the VacMaster VP215! It's a chamber vac with a rotary oil pump. It pulls almost 30" of vacuum! Here's a few pics!

Here's one of the main reasons I bought it over other similar machines: The ability to seal retort pouches!

You may think you don't know what a "retort pouch" is, but you may have on in your pantry right now. They're the pouches you buy your tuna in. They were developed for the military for MREs.

With this machine I can now easily seal liquids like chili, marinara sauce, gravy, soup, etc. And the retort pouches will let me can stuff in "flexible cans" that are just like a Ball Jar but not breakable.

Thank you for explaining about the pouches. Up to that point in your post a huge "HUH?" was forming in my mind. What a dandy new toy for you! And I learned a new meaning for some old words. Plus yesterday I learned what a poolish is. Wonders never cease.

Hahaha! I bet you thought my pouches were adept at making witty comments! :-) I get what you're saying- there's a lot of jargon that can be hard to follow.

One cool factoid- water will boil in this thing at room temp! As you probably know from reading recipes, elevation affects cooking. This is basically because as the pressure of the blanket of atmosphere decreases water boils at a lower temp. Interestingly, when you apply 29.5" of vacuum the boiling point of water lowers drastically!

Pretty cool to see water boiling at 70 F!

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If we're not supposed to eat animals, then how come they're made out of meat?

Hahaha! I bet you thought my pouches were adept at making witty comments! :-) I get what you're saying- there's a lot of jargon that can be hard to follow.

One cool factoid- water will boil in this thing at room temp! As you probably know from reading recipes, elevation affects cooking. This is basically because as the pressure of the blanket of atmosphere decreases water boils at a lower temp. Interestingly, when you apply 29.5" of vacuum the boiling point of water lowers drastically!

I have noticed something similar with my Foodsaver, although not quite room temp. When I package up soup to put in the fridge I will put it in a Foodsaver canister and seal it. I left the soup cool a while before packaging it, but if there is still enough heat (but well below 212) as soon as I start vacuuming the air out the boil starts again. The first time it happened it freaked me out a bit because it lasted a good 20 minutes or so. After I realized what was happening I calmed down a bit.

So I am scared to ask, because your shopping trips somehow always seem to affect MY wallet, but how much does this thing go for?